Speakers

Klaus Wucherer - IEC President

Dr Wucherer became IEC President on 1 January 2011, for a three-year term. He was President of the German National Committee until 2008 and, having been president of VDE -- the German Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies -- from 2003 to 2005, remained a member of the supervisory board until 2009. He worked for Siemens for more than 30 years, serving as a member of the executive committee in the later years. At present he is chairman of the board for Infineon Technologies AG, holds a board position at Fraunhofer Institut and is a board member at several other companies

Aharon Amit - IEC General Secretary & CEO

Mr Amit became IEC General Secretary on 1 January 1999, having served as Deputy General Secretary since February 1996 and, prior to that, Special Operations Director from 1995. Previously he was CEO of the Fiji Post and Telecommunications Ltd. He headed several companies in Israel and was a consultant for a number of European companies.

Michel Bourassa - former Director Standards, Standards Council of Canada

After graduation as a Technologist (Electrical Power) in 1969, Mike worked 18 years in the Canadian electrical manufacturing industry and held a number of front-line and management positions in product design, testing, production, quality assurance, conformity assessment, and standards (company, national, North American, international).

From 1987 to 2010 he was with the Standards Council of Canada, with the last 6 years as Director of the Standards Branch. In that capacity he oversaw Canada’s involvement at both the governance and technical levels of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and related regional organizations of interest to Canada as well as leading the development of policy pertaining to standards in Canada. At the international level he served as Canada’s alternate to IEC’s Standardization Management Board for 7 years (1997-2005), represented Canada at ISO’s Technical Management Board for 4 years (2006-2010), and was active at the Pacific Area Standards Congress (2004-2010). His previous roles at SCC included: management of standards governance matters, serving Canadian volunteers to IEC and ISO as Senior Program Officer, Secretary of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC, and Secretary of the Advisory Committee on Standards Development.

Now retired, Mike continues his volunteer work to create a certification system for disabled person - assistance animal teams and enjoys the outdoors in all seasons.

Stephanie McLarty - President of REfficient Inc

Stephanie McLarty is President of REfficient Inc., a nationwide professional services company which helps organizations to manage technology turnover. She has been a member of TC 111 (Environmental Standardization for Electrical and Electronic Products and Systems) since 2008, where she is an expert on PT 62635 and PT 62650 concerning end-of-life information exchange and recyclability rate. In 2009, Stephanie was honoured as a Finalist in the prestigious Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year awards due to her achievements in business and advocating sustainability.

Peter Lanctot - Technical Officer

Peter Lanctot has been with the IEC since 2004 and works in the North American Regional Office of the IEC outside of Boston. His duties as Technical Officer include guidance and oversight of 25 Technical and Sub Committees.

In addition to his responsibility as Technical Officer, Peter is the Secretary of SG3, which is the IEC Strategic Group on Smart Grids. This Group provides advice on fast-moving ideas and technologies likely to form the basis for new International Standards or IEC TCs (Technical Committees) in the area of Smart Grid technologies. SG3 has published the Smart Grid Roadmap which covers standards for interoperability, transmission, distribution, metering, connecting consumers and cyber security; and is in the final stages of developing a web based Smart Grid Mapping Chart that can be used by smart grid project managers worldwide.

Also a participant in the 2010 Young Professionals Workshop, Peter has over 20 years of experience in multinational companies and holds a MBA in International Business and a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering.

Karen Higginbottom was elected ISO/IEC JTC 1 Chairman in 2008. She has been involved in consortia and standards organizations since 1987. She was Chair of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) from 1997 until 2008 and served four years as Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC 1’s Special Working Group on Accessibility.

Karen is Director of Standards Initiatives for Hewlett Packard’s Office of Corporate Strategy and Technology. She began her IT career at Pacific Bell and later led the Standards and Consortia team at Apple Computer. She has been with Hewlett-Packard for 17 years.

In 2007, Karen was awarded the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Edward Lohse Information Technology Medal. She holds a BA degree in Communications and Television Production from the University of Wisconsin.

Gabriel Barta - Head of Technical Coordination

Gabriel Barta is Swiss, of Hungarian origin and educated in Britain. A computer scientist for many years, he worked in research and industry and taught at universities in the USA and Denmark. His particular interests in computers were computer language theory, artificial intelligence and telecom applications. As IEC Head of technical coordination since 1997, he has broad responsibilities in technical, management and strategic areas. He is secretary to the Market Strategy Board and for the Conformity Assessment Board, is responsible in the IEC for ISO/IEC JTC 1 (the major information technology standardization committee), and manages various committees reporting to the Market Strategy Board and the Standardization Management Board.

Dennis Chew - APRC Officer in charge

Dennis Chew has been actively involved in international and regional standardization for more than 10 years. He had served as the Secretary to the Singapore National Committee of the IEC before taking on his appointment as Officer in Charge of the IEC Asia-Pacific Regional Centre (IEC-APRC) and setting up the office in 2002.

As Officer in Charge of the IEC-APRC, Dennis has been actively promoting the IEC and encouraging the use of IEC international standards and conformity assessment systems to both industry and government bodies in the Asia-Pacific region. This included sharing at national and regional seminars and meetings in Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. He also represented the IEC at the WTO TBT regional workshops that were held in Asia. In 2004, the scope of the IEC-APRC was expanded to include support to 5 IEC Technical Committees/Subcommittees. The IEC-APRC now supports 57 Technical Committees/Subcommittees, playing a key role to help ensure that IEC International Standards are developed according to the ISO/IEC Directives and adhere to target dates. With this additional focus, Dennis and his team have actively trained new Technical Committee/Subcommittee Chairmen and Secretaries to ensure that they understand the IEC rules and procedures so that they can effectively lead the standards development work of the IEC.

Dennis graduated from the University of Aberdeen with a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical) Honours degree.

Amaury Santos - LARC Regional Manager

IEC Latin America Regional Manager since 2006. Electrical Engineer, Bachelor of Civil Law, Specialization in International Business and Trade with over 20 years of professional experience in multinational companies in the commercial areas of business and technical products and systems for low, medium, high and extra high voltage equipment and systems.

Jack Sheldon - Standardization Strategy Manager

Jack Sheldon has worked at the IEC since 1983 and initially worked in standards development with responsibility, amongst others, for the creation of IEC/TC 100 (Multimedia systems and equipment). He was influential in the transformation of the IEC from a paper-based to a paperless organization and was instrumental in setting-up TISS, the IEC’s helpline to its community. More recently he was responsible for setting up the IEC’s Market Strategy Board, responsible for medium to long term market and technology overview.

He currently occupies the position of Standardization Strategy Manager, which includes the secretariat of the SMB (Standardization Management Board), and is responsible for Strategic Development in the IEC.
Prior to joining the IEC he worked as an electronics engineer in a number of IT and telecommunications companies in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Born in 1954, Jack Sheldon has an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University and an MBA from the Open University.

Jacques Régis - IEC Immediate Past President

Mr Régis became Immediate Past President on 1 January 2011, following his three-year term as President from 2008 to 2010. He was a senior executive of Hydro-Québec for more than 12 years, during the last seven of which he was president and CEO of Hydro-Québec TransEnergie, North America’s largest transmission system. He also chaired the Transmission Council of the Canadian Electricity Association, was vice-president of the executive committee of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council and was on the management committee of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation.

Tadashi Ezaki was involved in the development of consumer video equipment in Sony Corporation and started his standardization carrier by participating in standardization of measurement methods of consumer video recorders in a Japanese industrial association. From that time, he has been involved in standardization in the field of audio, video and multimedia for more than 25 years. He has taken chair position of some standards committees for audio, video and multimedia in Japan and took the position of IEC TC 100 Assistant Secretary from 2004 when Japanese NC took over the secretariat of TC 100. He took over the secretary of TC 100 from 2011.

Jon Fairhurst attended his first standards meeting nearly 25 years ago. Today, Jon is the manager of Energy, Ecology & Television Standards at Sharp Laboratories of America. He is an active member of ANSI, ATSC, CEA, IEC, IEEE, and SMPTE.

In 2009, after completing work as Project Leader of IEC 62087 Ed. 2.0, "Methods of measurement for the power consumption of audio, video, and related equipment", Fairhurst was presented the IEC 1906 Award. IEC 62087 has since become the basis for measuring the active mode power consumption of televisions and set-top-boxes, worldwide. Today, Mr. Fairhurst is the Technical Area Manager of IEC TC100 TA12, "AV energy efficiency and smart grid applications."

Jon Fairhurst received his BSEE degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1980 and has been awarded 19 patents related to multimedia technologies.

Chris Agius - IECQ/IECEx Executive Secretary

Chris Agius, is the International Executive Secretary with operational CEO duties for the International IEC Conformity Assessment Systems

IECEx – covering Certification of Equipment, Services and Personnel associated with the use of Equipment in Explosive and potentially Explosive Atmospheres, eg oil and gas, mining, sugar and grain etc.

Chris also manages the Sydney Office of the IEC. Chris has a long standing involvement in the development of National and International Standards and Certification systems and has held various key positions including Manager International Alliance with Quality Assurance Services (now SAI Global) as well as Product Certification Program Manager and Group Manager, Electrotechnology which included key roles in the Australian National Certification Schemes.

Chris’s past experience includes the design, development and commissioning of process control instrumentation; the design of electronic instrumentation and control systems, including installation and commissioning of industrial installations in both hazardous and non-hazardous areas; as well as electrical testing and engineering investigation of industrial equipment/electronic equipment and control processes.

Chris has qualifications and experience in Electrical Engineering and is a long standing Registered ISO 9001 Quality Systems Auditor, and International IECQ and IECEx Lead Assessor, the author of numerous papers and presentations on the subject of National, Regional and International certification, inspection, testing systems.

Richard Schomberg - EDF VP Innovation Sourcing & Transfer EU

Richard Schomberg is VP Innovation Sourcing & Transfer EU at EDF where he is responsible for sourcing and transferring innovations to EDF Group in Europe. He designs and negotiates strategic innovation partnerships in priority with the Electric Power Research Institute (Palo Alto), National Laboratories, Universities and scientific/technical innovation players.

He has been active in the work of IEC in the field of electrical power distribution as a contributor and expert / project leader as well as the Chairman of TC8, Systems aspects of electrical energy supply. When the need for Smart Grid emerged, Richard was proposed by the USNC and approved as the Chairman of Strategic Group 3 for Smart Grid. Under his leadership, IEC has established a significant body of work and emerged as the global leader in this important technical area. He has gone forward in a successful mission with SG3 where there have been no prior efforts like it, and no trails to follow. In SG3, he has managed to find a meaningful blend of technology maps, Scenarios and use cases and coordination with multiple Technical Committees and National Committees as well as other groups and technology organizations working in the Smart Grid Area. He has also been a tireless spokesman for the work of the IEC and SG3, reaching out to many consortia, trade groups and smart grid initiatives around the world. For his valued leadership in this critical area, and his ongoing dedication and support of the IEC mission, Richard is receiving the IEC Lord Kelvin Award for 2011.

Alan Maislisch - IT Strategy and Planning Manager

Alan Maislisch has been working at the IEC for 17 years, focusing on collaboration tools, document management and database applications. Prior to that he worked with Digital Equipment Corp. on decision support systems, and with the UN Conference on Trade and Development on transfer of technology to developing countries.

His main interest is the application of IT tools and technology to facilitate communication and access to information. Within the IEC he has been involved in developing and implementing
IT solutions to help standards developers and end users work more effectively. He is also responsible for IT Strategy and managing IEC's IT Department.

He has a degree in mathematics and computer science from MIT and studied economics and international relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Michael Casson - Senior Technical Advisor

A Senior Technical Advisor in the IEC currently working out of the IEC Asia Pacific Regional Centre (APRC), Singapore. He was previously the Technical Department Manager from 2006 to 2011 after starting his career in the IEC as a Technical Officer in 1997.

Prior to joining the IEC, Michael worked in market development of flame retarded engineering thermoplastics for electrical components and halogen-free flame retarded compounds for cables with General Electric Plastics, Dupont and Union Carbide.

He has a B.Tech. and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Loughborough University, UK and after graduating worked for 6 years in research and development at the Battelle Research Institute, Geneva, Switzerland.